The Greek Language Question: Understanding the History of Greek for Modern Greek Language Learners

Ἡ ἑλληνικὴ γλῶσσα, ἐν τῇ παρούσῃ αὐτῆς καταστάσει, ἐστὶ χάος ἀδιεξήγητον, καὶ ἀπαιτεῖται ἡ θυσία ὁλοκλήρου βίου ἵνα ἐν μέρει δαμάσῃ τις αὐτήν.’

This sentence means ‘The Greek language, in its current form, is an incomprehensible chaos, and one needs to dedicate an entire lifetime to be able to, even a little, master it’ in Greek, or rather, in a variation of Greek called Katharevousa (meaning ‘purified’), and is nearly incomprehensible to Greek speakers today.  This sentence in Modern Greek (also know as Demotic Greek) would read: ‘Η ελληνική γλώσσα, στην τωρινή της μορφή, είναι ένα ακατανόητο χάος, και χρειάζεται να αφιερώσει κανείς ολόκληρη τη ζωή του για να μπορέσει, έστω και λίγο, να την κατακτήσει.’ If you are learning Greek, you might not be able to imagine how difficult it once was to decide which variation of the language to use for speaking or writing, Demotic or Katharevousa. But let’s start from the beginning.

This sentence was written at a time when the Greek language was experiencing deep diglossia, a chaos that divided schools, authors, and society (other prominent instances of diglossia are Haitian Creole and French in Haiti and Standard Arabic and regional Arabic dialects in the Arab-speaking world) . The “language question,” as Greek linguists referred to it then, began in the late 18th century following the foundation of the Greek state in 1830, and concerned the establishment of a specific linguistic variety as the official language of the Greek state. Until that period, the two varieties in use were Katharevousa and Demotic.

Katharevousa was the language used by a large portion of academics and was named was derived from the adjective katharos (“pure”), because it incorporated many elements from the Ancient Greek language, such as the polytonic system and the use of the dative case in its inflectional system. The polytonic system is the old accentuation system of the Greek language. In the polytonic system, there were several different accent marks and breathing marks, not just one as in modern Greek. The most used marks were:

1. Acute (´) → indicated a rising tone of voice.

2. Grave (`) → indicated a lower or neutral tone, mainly when a word was not at the end of a sentence.

3. Circumflex (῀) → indicated a pitch that rose and then fell on the same vowel.

4. Smooth breathing ( ἁ ) → showed that the word began with a light breath (no “h” sound).

5. Rough breathing ( ἑ ) → showed that the word was pronounced with an “h” sound at the beginning.

The polytonic system was established in Ancient Greek to represent real pitch accents and breathing sounds in pronunciation. It remained in use for centuries until 1982, when Greece officially adopted the monotonic system, which uses only one accent mark: (΄). 

Examples: Polytonic: ἄνθρωπος,  Monotonic: (modern Greek): άνθρωπος.

The dative case was one of the cases of Ancient Greek (along with the nominative, genitive, accusative, and vocative). It was used to indicate: The person or thing to whom something is given or addressed. It could also express manner, time, or means.

Example: Ἐδίδου τῷ παιδί τὸ βιβλίον. “He was giving the book to the child.”(Here, “τῷ παιδί” is in the dative case, showing to whom something is given.)

In Modern Greek the dative case has disappeared, and its function has been replaced by the preposition «σε» (se) + the accusative case:  «σε το παιδί» → «στο παιδί» (“to the child”). 

Until 1917, Katharevousa was used as the official language in education, but most Greeks spoke Demotic (the vernacular language). Since then, Demotic has evolved into what we today call Modern Greek (Νέα Ελληνικά).

At the time when Greek society was debating about which language the country should use, supporters of Katharevousa believed that the linguistic change proposed by Demotic constituted a corruption of the Greek language, as it distanced the language from the Ancient Greek heritage. However, Demotic supporters argued that linguistic change is part of language evolution, since every spoken language is a living organism that develops and changes, and that using the spoken vernacular would democratize society, giving easier access to information and education to regular people. 

On January 27, 1976, the language question came to an end when the Karamanlis government established Demotic Greek as the official language of the state and education. However, some fixed phrases of Katharevousa have survived and are still used in Modern Greek today. Expressions such as «ἐν τῷ μεταξύ», «ἐν πάσῃ περιπτώσει», and «δοῦναι καὶ λαβεῖν» are still widely used in contemporary Greek. If you are intersted in understanding and learning Demotic better, enroll in our Modern Greek group language classes online.

Front page of the Greek newspaper “To Vima” on January 28, 1976